The method fs.openSync() provided by the fs built-in module is the best way.

It returns a file descriptor:

const fs = require('fs')
const filePath = './.data/initialized'

const fd = fs.openSync(filePath, 'w')

the w flag makes sure the file is created if not existing, and if the file exists it overwrites it with a new file, overriding its content.

Use the a flag to avoid overwriting. The file is still created if not existing.

If you don’t need the file descriptor, you can wrap the call in a fs.closeSync() call, to close the file:

const fs = require('fs')
const filePath = './.data/initialized'

fs.closeSync(fs.openSync(filePath, 'w'))

Lessons in this unit:

0:	Introduction
1:	How to check if a file exists in Node.js
2:	▶︎ How to create an empty file in Node.js
3:	How to get the names of all the files in a folder in Node
4:	How to get the last updated date of a file using Node.js
5:	How to remove a file with Node.js
6:	How to write a JSON object to file in Node.js
7:	How to empty a folder in Node.js
8:	Working with file descriptors in Node
9:	Node File Paths
10:	Node file stats
11:	Working with folders in Node
12:	How to use the Node.js fs module with async/await
13:	How to get the current folder in Node
14:	How to get the file extension in Node.js from the MIME type
15:	How to get the file extension in Node.js
16:	How to list files in a folder in Node
17:	How to mass rename files in Node.js
18:	Node.js get all files in a folder recursively
19:	Incrementing multiple folders numbers at once using Node.js
20:	Save some text to a file in Node.js